Databank:Literacy Guidelines
Unacceptable date formats * The following date styles are not acceptable in the Toby Quadrado Wiki except in external titles and quotes: ** We do not use ordinal suffixes, articles, or leading zeros (except for the YYYY-MM-DD format). We do not insert a comma between month and year, nor does it insert a full stop after the day (1 January 2020); however, when using the mdy format, a comma is required between day and year. When a date in mdy format appears in the middle of text, include a comma after the year (The weather on September 8, 2001, was clear and warm). Write out the full year string instead of using the apostrophe to abbreviate the first two digits of the year. : * An exception to this guideline is when a specific style of a date achieves notability within a culture, such as the Fourth of July (does not adhere to ordinal nor spelled out guideline, yet is acceptable). * Do not use year-final numerical date formats (DD/MM/YYYY or MM/DD/YYYY), as they are ambiguous: "03/04/2005" could refer to 3 April or to March 4. For consistency, do not use such formats even if the day number is greater than 12. * Do not use customized variations of the YYYY-MM-DD format. E.g., do not replace hyphen characters ("-") with any other character; do not change the order of year, month, or day. Use leading zeros for days or months when needed to make these fields two digits. * Yearless dates (March 5) are inappropriate unless the year is obvious from the context. There is no such ambiguity with recurring dates, such as January 1 is New Year's Day. * Do not use Roman numerals, such as "MMXII" for "2012", to denote years. Punctuation * Punctuation adheres to American-English rules, such as straight double quotations (") and Latin punctuation always ending with a period. As an exception, however, quotes for subjects, such as episode titles, should not have punctuation inside of the parentheses. * Examples: ** Subject scenario: *** Incorrect: The character debuted in the episode "TBA." *** Correct: The character debuted in the episode "TBA". ** Character quote scenario: *** Incorrect: One character said "Hello, everyone". *** Correct: One character said "Hello, everyone." ** Latin abbreviation scenario: *** Incorrect: Dr Character took care of the friend's dressing. *** Correct: Dr'.' Character took care of friend's dressing. *** Incorrect: Everyone is looking forward to watching Character 1 vs Character 2. *** Correct: Everyone is looking forward to watching Character 1 vs'.' Character 2. Ellipses * Stylize an ellipsis by using three unspaced dots (...). ** Other forms such as three spaced dots (. . .) or the pre-composed ellipsis character (…) are not useful to this site. The former, typically used in print, is unnecessarily wide and requires non-breaking spaces ( ) to keep it from breaking at the end of a line; the latter is not only harder to input and edit, but it will also sometimes appear too small in some fonts. Text omission * When using ellipses to omit text, put a space on each side of it, with the exception of non-terminal punctuation (quotation marks, brackets, etc.). ** Correct: "There's a saying: ... today is a gift. That is why it is called the present." * Only use terminal punctuation after the ellipsis if it is textually important. This is typically for exclamation points or question marks and very rarely with periods. * Only use square brackets around the ellipsis (...) when there is a non-text-omission ellipsis already in the quotation. ** Correct: "You're awesome... ... goodbye." Hyphens and dashes Hyphen * In sentences, use hyphens (-) to connect non-typically paired words. Do NOT use it on words that are paired together. * Do NOT use a hyphen or double hyphens (--) in place of an appropriate em- or en-dash (see below). Em-dash * Use em-dashes (—) for a speaker signature mark, speech interruptions, as well as situations where it could be in place of a comma. Do NOT use double hyphens (--) in place of it. When using it in a sentence, do NOT use spaces before and after it. ** Correct: "Welcome to Forms Toons." —'''Official tagline ** '''Correct: "... What heck is'—'" ** Correct: "An individual puts its birthday gift'—'''and his happiness'—'into the trash ..." ** '''Incorrect': "An individual puts its birthday gift '--' and his happiness '--' into the trash ..." En-dash * Use en-dashes (–) for "up to and through" values such as time periods. Do NOT use spaces before and after it. ** Correct: 2019'-'2020 Quotation marks * Enclose quotations with double quotation marks ("), and enclose quotations within quotations with single quotation marks ('). * Use only straight "typewriter" quotations (") rather than the curly "typographic" quotations (“”). * When deciding what punctuation to place inside or outside of the quotation marks, use the rules of British-style " ". ** The alternative method to this is American-style " ", which is widely used and accepted in North America. However, despite the franchise's American origins, this wiki prefers the British method to better illustrate accuracy and preciseness with the wiki's content rather than print aesthetics. Spacing * Use only one space after terminal punctuation (periods, exclamation points, question marks, etc.). The use of double spaces is pointless as the MediaWiki text software automatically condenses any number of spaces to just one when rendering the page. Broad Characters * Only use the punctuation characters that are available on your keyboard unless it is an HTML entity that is non-existent on the keyboard (like math symbols such as ∞). This means any symbol outside of a common keyboard is not allowed (“ < "). Not even the composition of an HTML entity is allowed (∞ < ∞) unless the character resembles a keyboard character (Α > Α / α in Greek alphabet; See Databank:Technical#HTML Entities). ** '''Incorrect': “No one will defeat me!” ** Correct: "No one will defeat me!" Oxford/Serial Comma * If a sentence contains a series of three or more words, phrases',' or clauses, the Oxford comma can be used before the coordinating conjunction and the final item in a series. This comma is required on all the articles. * The Oxford comma's main purpose is to clarify what would be ambiguity or confusion as it is otherwise a matter of style, so depending on the context, a missing Oxford might be needed. On the third sentence, are mother, father and older brother hero's friends? * For the sake of asking less responsibility, the Oxford comma is added in any context. ** Examples: *** Incorrect: The character has friends, enemies, family and acquaintances. *** Correct: The character has friends, enemies, family',' and acquaintances. *** Incorrect: The Character 1 chased the Character 2 so fast that he soon fell, hit his head and scratched, needing to go to a hospital. *** Correct: The Character 1 chased the Character 2 so fast that he soon fell, hit his head',' and scratched, needing to go to a hospital. Captions * Every image should have a brief (unless it is a technical graph where everything needs to be explained) caption unless it is a "self-captioning" image (book covers) or an unambiguous depiction of the subject of the article. They will start with a capital letter, be sentence fragments, and should not end with a period unless a complete sentence occurs in the caption. Phonetic Transcription * The international phonetic alphabet and pronunciation respelling serve to give readers an easier time knowing how to pronounce difficult-to-pronounce words. These will be used sparingly and only when the community (depending on the majority's native tongue and proficiency in English) has proven to have difficulty. International Phonetic Alphabet :See the IPA keyboard for an example website to construct IPAs. * The IPA next to the name of the English name will link to Wikipedia:IPA for English so it can provide a how-to guide on why the current IPA would be correct or not. It is provided on this page for this reason, too. Pronunciation Respelling :See the smallcaps generator. * Pronunciation respelling is when a word is hyphenized to separate distinct syllables. It is more tricky because it takes into account how one stresses a part of a word, phrase, or term and it cannot be used to represent pronunciations from any language in the world accurately. Both are used for non-native speakers and those chiefly familiar with English orthography. * The pronunciation respelling, like the IPA, will be linked to Wikipedia:Help:Pronunciation respelling key for a how-to guide. The respelling will be italicized, and the stressed words will be bolded and in small capital letters (e.g. Machine (mə-'''sʜᴇᴇɴ''')) |} __NOEDITSECTION__ *